Count Love

We were curious to investigate if the topics and concerns that people have been protesting
exhibit geographic patterns. The map below shows the most common protest category in
each state between January 20, 2017 and October 20, 2017. (The map can also be toggled
to show the most protested topics based on all of our data, but the analysis text will not self-update!)

Date:

We hesitate to draw too many conclusions and narratives from this map—just
because a particular concern isn't a state's most protested topic does not
mean that its citizens don't care about that particular concern. With this
strong caveat, we do spot a few broad geographic trends. Immigration tops
the protest list in states that border Mexico.
In states such as Missouri and Virginia
with recent and highly public incidents of racism, racial injustice rises
to the top of protestor concerns. In West Virginia and other states
that would have been greatly affected by changes to the Affordable Care Act,
healthcare protests rank first. While this map and its rankings
are not a good proxy for ordering all of the concerns
that protestors have publicly demonstrated about, they do serve as a
barometer to highlight a few key topics that people are frustrated about
across the country.